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Tanya Williams - Elgin Taylor
One of the major tasks facing teachers in the education system is how to get teenagers to focus. This could be a daunting proposition for many, but not for Tanya Williams, a religious education and design arts teacher at Mount Moreland Primary and Junior High School in St Catherine.
She told The Star: "I have often been told by colleagues that this and that child was no good and would amount to nothing. However, I found out that after spending some time teaching them, they started making progress."
Williams pointed to motivation as the factor responsible for this change. "I think motivation is the answer. These kids lack guidance and love. They need someone to show them another way, to turn them in the right direction," she stated.
Williams said that she had it in her to become a teacher from an early age when she used to practise on her dolls. The Spanish Town-born teacher also revealed that while a student at St Catherine High School, the idea of becoming a defence advocate also came into the picture. However, she said her grandmother steered her back towards the path of teaching.
Having settled the matter of her career choice, she enrolled in Shortwood Teacher Training College in September 1999 for formal training. She graduated from that institution three years later with a diploma in secondary education.
She got her first teaching job at Thompson Town High School in Clarendon. The period of employment was from September to December, 2002. Another short-term employment followed at Denham Town High School in Kingston from January to August, 2003. Then, from September 2003 to August 2008, she worked at Trench Town High School in Kingston. She taught religious education and social studies at both Denham Town and Trench Town schools, going all the way up to the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) level, at the latter institution.
She has been at her present school since January of this year teaching students at the secondary level, that is, from grades seven to nine.
Williams, said she was enjoying her job immensely and was
currently pursuing part-time studies towards a bachelor's degree in guidance and counselling. She hoped that this extra training would put her in an even better position to positively impact the lives of her students.
This young , charming and
innovative teacher admitted that there was the challenge of the unruly behaviour of some students, but said that to her, it is not a major factor.
"You just have to know how to relate to them. You cannot force your authority on them, because as children they will rebel. You just have to find ways of developing good teacher/student relationship," she said.
